DOOM-MONGERS of the climate variety might want to look away now – we apparently have more time to save the planet. A recent study published in Nature Geoscience suggests it will warm more slowly than feared, perhaps buying an extra decade for action.

Advertisement

So it all adds up to an unexpected opportunity to get ahead of the crisis – or at least catch up. Or does it?

The idea that preventing the worst of global warming might be not only sensible but also economically sound is not new&colon; in 2007 the UK’s Stern review concluded it would cost just 1 per cent of global GDP. Of the recent developments, what is really surprising is the IEA’s suggestion that keeping the hope of 2 °C alive until 2020, when a new global treaty could come into force, can be achieved effectively for free.

Even more surprising, the IEA’s plan to achieve this rests on just four policies&colon; improved energy efficiency; limiting use of the most inefficient coal-fired power stations; reducing methane leaks from oil and gas production; and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. It says these could deliver 80 per cent of the reductions needed by 2020. Unfortunately it all looks like pie in the sky.

The biggest questionable assumption is the reliance on efficiency to deliver half of the projected emissions reductions. Of course, like motherhood or world peace, efficiency is hard to knock. But history suggests that in a straight fight with economic growth, it usually loses and emissions continue to rise.

There are exceptions. The latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy points out that energy consumption in the industrialised world has fallen in four out of the last five years, and that in three of those four the economy grew. Last year, for example, energy consumption in the OECD countries, mainly advanced economies, fell 1.2 per cent while the economy grew 1.4 per cent. Apparently it is possible to loosen the ties between growth and energy consumption, but perhaps only when growth is feeble.

Unfortunately it is not true where it really matters. Since 2008, when the West plunged into recession, energy consumption in the OECD has been increasingly overtaken by the non-OECD nations, such as China, India and Brazil. They now claim 56 per cent of global energy. Great strides have been made in improving efficiency too, but these have been overwhelmed by growth. China has roughly halved its emissions per unit of economic output over the past 20 years, yet despite this its energy consumption and emissions have more than doubled as the economy boomed over the past decade.

In 2012 alone, the IEA notes approvingly, China’s energy efficiency improved 3.8 per cent – yet still its emissions rose by 300 megatonnes, contributing three-quarters of the entire global increase. In other words, global carbon dioxide emissions have climbed inexorably to record highs, and an atmospheric concentration of 400 parts per million, in spite of significant efficiency gains by the world’s biggest emitter and the OECD.

There seems little reason to expect these trends will change in the coming decade. China’s economy has proved resilient in the face of widespread slowdown, and per capita GDP and energy consumption are still a fraction of those in the West. A senior Chinese official said last year the country’s emissions would grow until per capita GDP had risen fivefold. In this context, it is hard to imagine the IEA’s efficiency measures – sensible as they are – making much of a dent.

Some of its other proposals – phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in the Middle East, for example, where dirt cheap petrol and electricity are vital to defending the thrones of local tyrants – look equally forlorn.

If the IEA’s plan looks unlikely to keep a 2 °C trajectory alive until 2020, it is not even clear that this is the right target, or that we have any “extra” time as has been suggested. On the contrary, many climate scientists, including James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha, argue that 2 °C of warming would trigger catastrophic consequences, and the increase must be limited to 1 °C.

This would mean leaving most known fossil fuel reserves alone, never mind the emerging unconventional resources such as shale oil and gas, the amount of which in the US was recently estimated by the country’s Department of Energy to be equivalent to 10 years of global demand. Given that we have already started exploiting non-conventional oil and gas sources, it would imply immediate and continuing cuts in fossil fuel consumption.

If this veto of reserves were enforced, it would saddle the industry with losses of trillions of dollars on untapped assets.

All of this underscores the fundamental weakness of the IEA approach. Combating global warming may be possible at no net economic cost, but meaningful change inevitably creates winners and losers. And the main losers must be the fossil energy companies, which cannot possibly coexist, at least in their current form, with a target of even 2 °C. The industry must be supremely confident, however, that no meaningful action is imminent, since it continues to invest some &dollar;700 billion per year developing coal, oil and gas reserves.

Fossil energy companies cannot coexist in their current form with a target of 2 °C global warming

About this the IEA plan has nothing to say. To be fair, it is intended only as a sticking plaster until a tough new treaty can be agreed and enforced. We had better pray that negotiators at the next big climate summit in Paris in 2015 tackle the real issues.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Reasons to be fearful”